Affiliations: [a] Institute for Transplantation Diagnostics and Cell Therapeutics, Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf, Germany | [b] Department of Urology, University Hospital Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland | [c] Group of Computational Biology and Systems Biomedicine, Biodonostia Health Research Institute, San Sebastián, Spain | [d] Hegau-Bodensee-Hospital, Singen, Germany | [e] Department of Urology, Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf, Germany | [f] IKERBASQUE, Basque Foundation for Science, Bilbao, Spain
Correspondence:
[*]
Corresponding author: Simeon Santourlidis, Institute for Transplantation, Diagnostics and Cell Therapeutics, Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf, Moorenstrasse 5, 40225 Düsseldorf, Germany. Tel.: +49 211 81 16905; Fax: +49 211 81 04543; E-mail: santourlidis@itz.uni-duesseldorf.de.
Note: [1]
These authors contributed equally to this work.
Abstract: Urinary DNA is increasingly gaining importance in diagnosis of urological malignancies. Especially cell-free DNA originating from apoptotic and necrotic cells of the early tumor could become a key target for early stage tumor diagnosis. Aberrant DNA methylation forms tumor cell characteristic epigenetic profiles which are covalently established before any tumor related aberration at transcriptional or protein level has occurred. In addition, these epigenetic signatures are alterably adapted to and accompanying the individual stages of multistep, progressive tumorigenesis. Hence, they seem very promising for diagnosis as well as for monitoring the patient's follow-up care and even for decisions regarding personalized therapeutic options. The essential prerequisite at this approach will be a reliable methodological handling of the biological material of interest. In this study we present detailed analyses of LINE-1 DNA methylation profiles and demonstrate the sensitive detection of LINE-1 DNA methylation differences as well as between cancer patients and healthy individuals, between urinary cellular and cell-free DNA. In addition, we show methylome differences between both DNA fractions from a healthy individual and bladder cancer patients. In conclusion, we demonstrate here the unrestricted amenability of urinary cell-free DNA for both, a detailed characterization of a distinct DNA methylation alteration and its sensitive detection and a comprehensive global, array-based screening for DNA methylation differences.
Keywords: Cell-free DNA, DNA methylation, urine, diagnosis, bladder cancer
